Schumer Hits Back at GOP Making Spurious ‘Apples to Oranges’ Comparisons With His 2007 Speech

Only an hour after Justice Antonin Scalia‘s death was confirmed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued an outright, pre-emptive rejection of any nominees to the Supreme Court that President Barack Obama might name in his final year in office. Schumer rebuked Senate Republicans in an appearance on This Week Sunday, calling it “obstructionism” and an abnegation of duty.

It was at this point that others unearthed a speech Schumer gave before the American Constitution Society in 2007, in which he seemed to contradict his own position, at least when a Republican executive was in office.

In his remarks, the Democratic senator from New York argued that, given the “limited usefulness” of the confirmation process, and the “obfuscation” of George W. Bush‘s nominees’ records he observed in the hearings, he and his colleagues “should not confirm any Bush nominee to the Supreme Court except in extraordinary circumstances.”

“Even a quick perusal of the speech shows it provides no cover and that Leader McConnell is comparing apples to oranges,” Schumer wrote in his statement released Tuesday. He continued:

What I said in the speech given in 2007 is simple: Democrats, after a hearing, should entertain voting no if the nominee is out of the mainstream and tries to cover that fact up. There was no hint anywhere in the speech that there shouldn’t be hearings or a vote. Only that if after hearings and a vote, Democrats determined that the nominee was out of the mainstream and trying to hide it, they should have no qualms about voting no. Nor was there any hint that this idea that Democrats should oppose hard right ideologues should apply only in the fourth year of the president’s term. In fact, I said it should apply to this president, George W. Bush, or any future president whenever they nominated such a candidate.

See? You can’t compare these nearly identical situations because it’s different this time.

As many conservatives have noted in recent days, Senator Chuck Schumer said in 2007 that Senate Democrats should do what they could to keep President George W. Bush from confirming any more conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Now he’s explaining that today’s situation is completely unlike that one (h/t Susan Ferrechio).

The first step: mischaracterizing what he said. Here’s his retrospective spin: “What I said in the speech given in 2007 is simple: Democrats, after a hearing, should entertain voting no if the nominee is out of the mainstream and tries to cover that fact up.” Here’s what he actually said:

We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.

Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances (emphasis in original).

He wasn’t saying that senators should “entertain voting no.” He was saying that they should almost certainly vote no.

It is important that the GOP keep calling the Dems on this type of hypocrisy and it should come from the Senators we elected, not just the blogs & twitter. Democratic politicians seem to have no problem calling the Right liars and accusing them of wrongful behavior but our side appears to lack backbone.

katiejane-
The elected Republican political class (McConnell, Boehner, Ryan, etc,) doesn’t have the backbone or cojones to do that, along with many other things they should be doing, hence, Donald Trump’s ascendancy.

The only thing we need to know about all this is that our side will fold like a deck chair on the Titanic. They’re already looking for life jackets. Once the Dem’s cry bi-partisanship it’s over. Done. Finished. Nothing left but to clean up the mess. Lets admit it, they do this and the Trump people will anoint him king. The rest of us will be considering how we, like the Chinese can build an island in the pacific to live on.

You touched the live wire. Because the GOPe would prefer not to see Cruz as their party’s nominee, they have an incentive to not cave to Obama on this matter. The question is – Can they act in their own best interests and block Obama’s nominee(s), or will they shoot themselves in the foot while shooting us in the back?

When the majority party in the Senate refuses to confirm a presidential appointee, it is not obstructing the process, it is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do by blocking a candidate who does not meet with the approval of the party’s constituents. That’s why the president is required to secure the consent of the Senate – so he’s forced to sometimes deal with an opposition party, knowing that that party can block nominees who aren’t at least moderate. (And knowing that nominees who are known partisans are simply not viable.)

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